Behold: RackSpotter – A crowdsourced bike parking tool!

[PotomacCyclist]

Another rack that I put in the wrong spot. I can’t access the Satellite view on my phone, so it can be difficult to tell where the exact location is on the map. The southern-most bike rack at National Airport (listed as 2400 South Smith Boulevard) is off by about 150-200 ft. It is located farther to the northwest from where I put it on the map. Even looking at Google Maps on my home computer, I can’t pinpoint the exact location because Street View isn’t available on that part of the road.

It’s a little to the left of the center of this map view: http://goo.gl/maps/70uQd

To the right of the yellow car on S. Smith Blvd. in the Google Map view. Then move NNW along that concrete wall, to the spot just before those four consecutive dots that appear in a line in the Satellite View. Without Street View, I can’t narrow it down closer than that.

[PotomacCyclist]

The 2401 South Smith Boulevard rack is also slightly off from its actual location at the airport. But this spot is closer to the actual location. This rack is located to the left of that white rectangular object visible in the Satellite View. (This is the rack on the north end of Terminal C, or the main part of the airport, not including the administrative, parking and maintenance buildings.)

Satellite View for RackSpotter is not available on my phone. Even on my home computer, there is no Street View available. The Street View images only cover the upper level of the road, not the bottom arrivals area of the airport.

[PotomacCyclist]

One more item: How do you add a photo as a comment after the rack has already been added? I see how to add a comment, but no way to add a photo to an existing rack location.

[Tim Kelley]

@PotomacCyclist 113565 wrote:

One more item: How do you add a photo as a comment after the rack has already been added? I see how to add a comment, but no way to add a photo to an existing rack location.

That’s a feature we’d like to add! I’ll see about the other misplaced locations.

[PotomacCyclist]

There are at least 3 bike rack locations at the Pentagon, but I believe all of them are restricted to authorized personnel only.

http://www.armyg1.army.mil/pik/pik.asp#GettingThere

I think some of the South Parking Lot racks are visible on Google Maps Satellite view: http://goo.gl/maps/B9kCd

I don’t know if these should be added or not, because they aren’t publicly accessible and Arlington doesn’t have any control or responsibility over bike parking at the Pentagon. But if someone who works at the Pentagon wants to add them to the BikeSpotter map, there they are.

[CaseyKane50]

@Tim Kelley 112524 wrote:

Thanks for doing that. I tweeted at the high school principal and the APS main twitter account too. Even got a response from APS saying that they’d pass it along already.

Let us know what Tom says!

Tom sent me an email yesterday that the rack has been repaired. I haven’t had a chance to ride by the school to get a confirming picture.

[PotomacCyclist]

@PotomacCyclist 113625 wrote:

There are at least 3 bike rack locations at the Pentagon, but I believe all of them are restricted to authorized personnel only.

http://www.armyg1.army.mil/pik/pik.asp#GettingThere

I think some of the South Parking Lot racks are visible on Google Maps Satellite view: http://goo.gl/maps/B9kCd

I don’t know if these should be added or not, because they aren’t publicly accessible and Arlington doesn’t have any control or responsibility over bike parking at the Pentagon. But if someone who works at the Pentagon wants to add them to the BikeSpotter map, there they are.

I walked around the Pentagon Metro station and located quite a few rack spaces. All the racks along the south parking lot appear to be accessible to the public. I found 370 wheelbender spaces in the parking lot. They are intended for employees and official visitors, but anyone can access the racks.

There are U racks where the parking lot meets the Pentagon Metro sidewalks, and a few more U racks at the 9/11 Memorial.

No photos of any of these, because photography is expressly prohibited on the Pentagon Reservation. I guess I could have sneaked in some photos. But posting them on the public RackSpotter website would be a poor way of hiding such photos.

[bobco85]

@PotomacCyclist 114018 wrote:

No photos of any of these, because photography is expressly prohibited on the Pentagon Reservation. I guess I could have sneaked in some photos. But posting them on the public RackSpotter website would be a poor way of hiding such photos.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it as I’ve had no issues with taking pictures at the 9/11 memorial and metro obelisk. As long as you’re not taking pictures of security-related things like checkpoints, barriers, etc., I think it’s fine.

Also, good job on finding 370 wheelbender spaces! It seems to me that the largest bike rack areas tend to be schools, but I’m curious to go see this massive group. I wonder if it’s the largest* bike parking spot in Arlington?

* Side note: does the Rackspotter website keep track of details such as this? That’d be pretty cool to show the top 3 or top 5 largest bike parking spots along with other details like pie charts of bike parking racks used (x% of bike parking spaces are U racks, y% for wave racks, etc.). I’m guessing this will become more available once the county as a whole gets covered.

[PotomacCyclist]

Those 370 wheelbender racks are set up in three rows.

One row contains 170 spaces. I’m just going by the recommended number for wheelbender racks. There are groups of 3 vertical bars, which I’m counting as 2 spaces. The main wheelbender racks include 10 of these groups, so 20 spaces per rack. The row has 5 of these 20-space racks, plus 5 more racks with 14 spaces per rack.

Then about 300 ft. to the ESE, there is another row of five of the 20-space racks. On the other side of a walkway is another row of five 20-space racks. So 100 + 100 there, and the 170 on the other row, for 370 total.

The Pentagon Metro group includes 12 U racks for 24 spaces. The 9/11 Memorial group has 5 U racks for 10 spaces. Those U racks are extra thick for some reason. The bars in those racks are about 5″ in diameter.

As for the photos, I know I could sneak in the photos. There were few guards around there. But posting them to the RackSpotter site provides solid proof of the infraction, for the DOD to see, so I’m not going to do that. I did take some photos of the 9/11 Memorial, where photography is explicitly allowed, but there are no bike racks inside the memorial.

I continue to have difficulty placing the pin in the precise locations on the RackSpotter map, because there is no Satellite View on the mobile website. I try to line up the sidewalks, roads and parking lot travel lanes, plus nearby buildings and parks. I was pretty close this time. If anyone is looking for the Pentagon racks based on the RackSpotter map, they will find them. It’s pretty tough to miss those rows of racks, once you know the general location on the map.

[PotomacCyclist]

I went to Fort Scott Park and Eads Park for the first time ever. I’ve passed by Eads Park before, but I never went inside the park. It’s a smaller park. Not much of interest if you don’t live in the immediate neighborhood. There’s a bike rack just off to the side. I added it to the map, but it might be bike parking for the residents of the nearby apartment building.

No bike racks at Fort Scott Park. I hadn’t ridden up Fort Scott Drive in a while. I had forgotten just how steep that road is, and even harder on a heavy CaBi bike. I need to start adding more hills (on the bike and on the run) anyway, so it’s all good.

I also got all the bike racks at the S. Glebe shopping center and around the Gunston complex. The skies opened up around that time, so I stopped the BikeSpotter run at that point. If it had been warmer, I would have continued. But it was 10-15 degrees colder than my comfort level.

One neat part about finding bike racks is riding (or running) along some side streets and areas that I haven’t really been to before, even though I’ve ridden or run near those places many times in the past. I’ve ridden past Gunston a couple times before, but I’ve never looked around the park or the Gunston theater/community center building.

S. Glebe Rd. is mostly an unpleasant place to ride. The car drivers are traveling at a decent clip, so I stayed on the (narrow and bumpy) sidewalk for the most part. Even on a good day, I don’t know if I would ride on S. Glebe. On a rainy day, it’s a really bad idea to ride on S. Glebe. Four Mile Run Trail is the better option, but that trail doesn’t let you check for bike racks along S. Glebe.

Over the past week, I also checked 23rd St. (Not much there once you head west of the bars/restaurants, but a couple churches did have bike racks.) Someone else added a few of the bike racks to the map too. I ran along Arlington Ridge Rd. one day. As I suspected, not much there either, except for another church. Almost everything else is stand-alone residential houses, which almost never have outdoor bike racks. I checked Prospect Hill Park too. I didn’t take any pictures, because I passed by the bike racks in the evenings and/or while it was raining.

The map is now more than 95 percent complete east of 395, and east of Washington Blvd on the east loop of that road (i.e., the Pentagon). It’s possible that there are more bike racks inside public parking garages. I’ve already found a few of these along Crystal Drive and at the Pentagon City mall garage.

I have a couple more spots to check in the next week or two. I already know where the racks are located, based on Google Maps Street View, but I need to verify that the racks are still there and also check just how many bike parking spaces there are.

Later in the year, I’ll add some updates when various large projects are completed. The courts at Virginia Highlands Park are being renovated. I saw one bike rack behind the temporary fencing. I didn’t add it to the map because it is not currently accessible. Even if the county doesn’t add new bike racks for the project, the existing bike rack will become available later this year (or early next year). There could be new bike racks added to that part of the park, but I can’t confirm this until the project is completed. It’s supposed to be finished late this year, but that probably means early 2016.

[CaseyKane50]

@PotomacCyclist 114063 wrote:

The map is now more than 95 percent complete east of 395, and east of Washington Blvd on the east loop of that road (i.e., the Pentagon).

I managed to find one that you haven’t found. It is in the WMATA parking lot at the corner of Eads and South Glebe:o

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[PotomacCyclist]

I wondered whether they could be an oddball bike rack in those bus and truck-heavy parking lots. I assumed that the bus lots and the car repair shop nearby wouldn’t have bike racks. Then I thought that it would be so strange that there might actually be some bike racks in those places.

But even if I saw it, I don’t think I would have added it to the map because it isn’t accessible to the public. Good find though.

[bobco85]

On Saturday, I covered Lee Highway between Sycamore and Veitch. One interesting thing I noticed about this stretch: there are not very many bike racks, but there is an overabundance of railings that are perfectly suited for locking up bikes. I’d love to put them on the map because it would really fill in the huge gaps on Lee Highway, but they technically aren’t bicycle racks.

[Steve O]

@bobco85 114076 wrote:

but there is an overabundance of railings . . .

Too late to balance your bike on one.

[PotomacCyclist]

I’m still having some difficulty in placing the pins on the map in the precise locations. I can’t access the Satellite View on my phone, only on a computer. I can zoom in on the Map View, but sometimes I can’t figure out the building or road lane or parking lot lane or train tracks. The “Use Current Location” feature only helps to narrow down the location to a general area. I can already figure that much out. My issue is with finding the exact location on the block or parking lot or sidewalk.

I rode Metro to the National Airport station yesterday and walked around the parking garage and Metro station to find other bike racks. (I knew they were there based on a bike rack map I located on the MWAA website.) I found all three, just about where the MWAA map said they would be. I added the parking garage spot in just about the right location on the map. (Three separate wave racks with 30 spaces total.)

But the two rack locations near the Metro station (one near the north Metro faregate plaza and the other near the south Metro faregate plaza) were not as easy to locate. One problem is that there are multiple lanes and levels there, including the Metro tracks, the upper road for airport departures, the lower road for airport arrivals, an airport circulator road at ground level, the sidewalks at ground level and the Metro faregate plazas at ground level (while the Metro stop is on an upper level). I kind of whiffed when looking at the lines on the map for the Metro tracks. I put the two bike rack locations off to the east of the tracks, when they are actually located just to the west (and one level down). They are almost underneath the tracks.

It may not matter that much, though. I doubt many commuters or visitors are going to be using those two bike rack locations near the Metro station. I can’t think of why someone would bike to the airport just to get on the Metro. The larger bike rack location in the parking garage is just off the extension from the MVT. (From the MVT, there are 3 possible entry points to the airport grounds, I believe. One at the north end, one in the middle of the airport grounds and one at the south end. To get to the parking garage bike racks, you would take the middle entry, then travel along a short loop over to the parking garage and the bike racks. The route shows up on the Bicycling view on Google Maps. The route appears to head onto S. Smith Blvd. but that’s not correct. To reach the bike racks, you need to stay on the sidewalk, which leads to a pedestrian entrance to the garage. FYI – A sign is posted at that entrance indicating that bikes are not allowed inside the parking garage.)

The Metro bike racks are a little closer to the airport terminals, but not that much closer. To reach the Metro bike racks, you also need to ride around the airport grounds quite a bit after turning off the MVT. I don’t know if it would be worth it. Plus there aren’t as many spaces at the Metro racks (4 at the north location, 14 at the south location vs. 30 at the parking garage). I think the Metro racks are more useful for Metro personnel at the station.

Before doing the RackSpotter runs, I was only vaguely aware of the presence of bike racks at the airport. I think I read about them once, but I had no idea where they were, or how to get there. Now I do. I’m not sure if I would bike to the airport in the future, although if and when the CaBi station gets installed there, I might ride CaBi. (The proposed CaBi airport station would be placed along the sidewalk that leads to the parking garage bike racks, based on the Arlington bikeshare expansion map.) I wouldn’t want to lock up a personal bike there, or anywhere else, for an extended period. It’s probably not a hotspot area for bike theft, but I think an experienced bike thief could still pull it off.

So National Airport is just about complete on the map. There is one other location, a smaller set of bike racks near the loading dock at Terminal A. I don’t know if it’s even accessible to the public. I think it may be, because it’s listed on the MWAA map on the public website. I’ll have to be careful about tracking that one down. I’ll have to bike to that one. It would be a long walk from the Metro. That area, down one of the service roads at Terminal A, is where I nearly smashed into the set of chains a couple weeks ago, between two small parking areas. I had to brake suddenly, which caused me to fall over to the side. (I was shaken momentarily but somehow, I managed to escape with only a small scrape on my arm and perhaps a minor bruise, and nothing else.)

It’s a little more difficult riding around National Airport, but at least it’s something different. It’s not everyday that you ride around somewhere like that. Like many others, I ride on the MVT past the airport frequently. But I’ve only ridden around the airport grounds a couple times over the years.

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